Big Bird Becomes a Beastie Boy in SESAME STREET “Sabotage” Parody

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Sesame Street embraced pop culture parodies long ago, as far back as “Cereal Girl” and continuing today with spoofs of Game of Thronesand other gems. (A personal favorite is a Law & Order: SVUsketch from ten years back.) Taking a cue from the show’s own proclivity for pop culture, Mylo The Cat, aka Adam Schleickhorn, makes pitch-perfect parody videos featuring existing footage of our favorite edutaining puppets. His latest masterpiece is a send-up of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” starring Big Bird.

Rather than coming from the TV show, the footage Mylo used is pulled from Follow That Bird, in which the titular bird is pursued by scam artists as he finds his way back to Sesame Street from Illinois. It’s an occasionally heartbreaking movie, but we fortunately don’t see any of that here; this re-cut emphasizes the franchise’s love of Easter eggs and madcap chases much more than its emotional impact. It recasts Big Bird and the Count in MCA’s roles (“As Himself” and Cochese), while Oscar the Grouch fills in for Ad-Rock’s Bobby, Super Grover takes on Mike D’s the Chief, and DJ Hurricane is replaced with Ms. Finch (Big Bird’s social worker in Follow That Bird; best not to ask questions here) as Bunny. Signature Sesame Street jokes that stick out include the license plates (SCRAM for Oscar/Bobby and 12345678910 for the Count/Cochese) and a goofy newspaper headline reading “Big Bird flies coop” (although goofy newspaper headlines are more of a Muppets thing, but there’s no need to nitpick).

As with any music video or TV title sequence recreation, it’s a lot of fun to watch this one side by side with the original. If you’ve ever flipped channels and paused on MTV Classic to take in the borderline cinematic classic that is “Sabotage,” Mylo’s take is going to blow your mind.

What music video do you want to see Mylo take on next? Keep the conversation going in the comments!